Converting MP3 to WMA

[butatista]

Can someone recommend a (free?) program that I can download that will allow me to do this?

 

[Mr.Radar]

Why do you want to do this? Transcoding, converting from one codec to another, won't improve the sound quality and will is guaranteed to decrease it if you're converting from one lossy format (MP3) to another (WMA).

 

[Krishna]

Actually I use Jriver Media Center (not free) and it decodes to WAV first and then encodes into what ever format/quality you want. It sounds pretty good too and is fairly fast. I used think that this wasn't possible but I have been proven wrong.

I hear that dbpoweramp has this same function, but IMHO Jriver is the best media organizer/mass tagger/file renamer/etc.

If some one knows how to setup EAC to do this please do reply.

 

[Shosta]

I use dbPowerAmp for transcode. You can use many plugins(encoders and decoders) and convert from and to any of them. (I use WMA, MP3, and FLAC)

I made conversion from LAME 3.96.1 to WMA, from WMA lossless to WAV, from WAV to LAME, etc.
Currently I'm putting all my CDs directly to FLAC and when I hear them in my philips hdd120 use de FLAC to WMA (quality 98) conversion.

 

[Guust-Fi]

DON'T DO IT! Quality will degrade. Re-rip your collection if you want your songs in wma or start downloading high quality music if you don't like standard mp3's

 

[blessingx]

Another vote for dbpoweramp if on the PC. If you have iTunes (PC or Mac) you can use that too, but I'd recommend converting to AIFF (keeps tags instead of WAV though WAV is more compatible) and using something else to encode to MP3. If you want to keep it simple, use iTunes to encode, but up the bitrate.

I assume you have to convert for compatibility reasons? It's so it's not the end of the world, but if you don't it's not recommended.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Voting "Don't do it but use dbPowerAmp if you really must".

 

[Krishna]

I was in the "Don't do it, you'll lose quality" camp just a week ago, but I decided to give it a try. I didn't realize that it first decodes the file into WAV and then encodes into whatever format, and thus I thought that it just converts from mp3 directly to whatever.

I am not an expert in the compression technology, so I guess when it decodes the file it returns it back to its original quality, but I might be wrong. I feel that the sound quality has increased (I was converting some old 128kb/s mp3s to alt-preset standard), but that may be a psychological side effect.

 

[necropimp]

you are very wrong... what is lost in compression is gone forever

 

[mr.karmalicious]

The pimp is absolutely correct.

 

[yyoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by necropimp you are very wrong... what is lost in compression is gone forever

That's absolutely true, but both of them may be right in this regard: you lose the detail, but some of the detail you lose may be "noise." This is why some files encoded at a lower bit rate may sound "better." It's the same sort of effect you get when you upgrade to significantly better headphones: the greater detail can reveals the flaws in the original recording as well as the source component and you may be happier with the cheaper headphones given your setup.

 

[BigFil]

Just curious, why the hell would you want to go from MP3 to WMA? Seems a little backwards if you ask me.

 

[dura]

Rip a CD to say 256 kbs (which is high!) and you throw away about 75% of the sound-information on the CD.
Play it back, it gets converted to something with as much informationdensity as the orginal lossless CD, so it makes up 4 times the info actually stored.
With clever algorithms this can still sound pleasing, but recoding this again to a different algoritm (again to 256 Kbs) will again throw away 3/4 of the information (which was to a large amount made up by the first decompression).
Because of the shared traits and cleverness of the algoritms (f.i. throw away more info at the frequency extremes, where hearing is lless sensitive) you can not bluntly state that after the second decompression there is only 1/16 of the original info present, far from it, but hopefully you get my drift.
But then again, the proof of the pudding, so how will it actually sound..? Frankly the thoughts mentioned above stopped me from seriously trying it

 

[Shosta]

In my case I was ripping to Mp3 using LAME but I discovered (i did several tests) that my player (Philips HDD120) it's almost gapless (most of the times gapless) with WMA but not with MP3. So now I'm converting from CD's to FLAC (lossless. I store later this FLACs in DVDs) and then I convert this to WMA into the player.
In the future when I will change player I will use again the FLAC files to convert to other format if it's needed.
I think it's a way to store and hear in my computer in a free lossless format and convert from that when I want something in my HDD120.
I'm doing this with dbPowerAmp as I said before.

 

[jpr703]

Don't do it!!